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Made in us
Clousseau




And for all the talk about how awful 40k rules are, and every thread on this topic is the same with the same ton of comments about how awful 40k rules are, the community is the largest on the globe for tabletop miniatures games and the tournament scene right now is the largest its probably ever been.

And some of our guys are going down to Atlanta for a tournament with a $200 buy-in and a $10,000 first prize that is GT in size and scope, as they push even further to make Professional 40k a thing.
   
Made in de
Longtime Dakkanaut




 auticus wrote:
And for all the talk about how awful 40k rules are, and every thread on this topic is the same with the same ton of comments about how awful 40k rules are, the community is the largest on the globe for tabletop miniatures games and the tournament scene right now is the largest its probably ever been.

And some of our guys are going down to Atlanta for a tournament with a $200 buy-in and a $10,000 first prize that is GT in size and scope, as they push even further to make Professional 40k a thing.


Sure. But even their (stated) intend isn't to make it the most tightly balanced of competitions, but to make it a more stream/broadcasteable, entertaining (and monetizeable) one.

The emphasis shifts from "telling a story" in the in-universe background towards "telling a story" in the marketable entertainment sense. It's about moving 40K from "D&D" to American Football with lots of ad breaks, player drama and a giant half-time show. It's not about moving 40K from "D&D" towards chess.

Ever rotating "top tier armies" and a "changing meta" is as vital to them as it is to GW sales. Perfect balance would be the death of both in the long run.


This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 11:40:59


 
   
Made in fi
Calculating Commissar







 auticus wrote:
And for all the talk about how awful 40k rules are, and every thread on this topic is the same with the same ton of comments about how awful 40k rules are, the community is the largest on the globe for tabletop miniatures games and the tournament scene right now is the largest its probably ever been.


And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies. Newbies either drop out of the game over the first year or two, or they become tournament players themselves. Anyone else barely amounts to a rounding error in the calculations, which is the point I made earlier: the mythical casual fast-and-loose gamer GW thinks plays their game scarcely exists anymore, and hasn't been a majority since at least the 3rd edition days (Rogue Trader and 2E tournaments, if they existed, would have been entertainment for a very hardcore self-flagellating wargamer set).

The supply does not get to make the demands. 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 Agamemnon2 wrote:


And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies.


Citation needed.
   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

GW has always gone with the philosophy that their rules are flexible to allow for a variety of options, and it just so happens that a certain type of player uses those lax rules to exploit (in the min/max sense not necessarily cheating) in order to build the most uber list possible.

Back in the day, like in 1997 or so they even had (this was for WHFB but still applicable) an article called the "Spirit of the Game" where they said this same thing.

In the end though people will play the game the way they want, and most competitive players don't care what the design team thinks because they feel the design team are stupid anyways and are totally wrong.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sterling191 wrote:
 Agamemnon2 wrote:


And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies.


Citation needed.
Yeah... that's obviously false. I'd wager MOST people in the 40k community are casual or laid back players. It's just that those people don't post in forums or ask for list advice; it's the competitive/tournament players who are the most vocal because they are the most visible online, partially in thanks to the major conventions and such which focus on their tournaments while they have a lot more. A casual player isn't going to care if X is so much better than Y if they like X. The competitive player is going to pretty much *only* care what is the most effective unit.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:11:36


- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in fi
Calculating Commissar







Wayniac wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sterling191 wrote:
 Agamemnon2 wrote:


And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies.


Citation needed.
Yeah... that's obviously false. I'd wager MOST people in the 40k community are casual or laid back players. It's just that those people don't post in forums or ask for list advice; it's the competitive/tournament players who are the most vocal because they are the most visible online, partially in thanks to the major conventions and such which focus on their tournaments while they have a lot more. A casual player isn't going to care if X is so much better than Y if they like X. The competitive player is going to pretty much *only* care what is the most effective unit.

I don't see how I'm supposed to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim as "Oh, there's tons of casual players out there, you just never see them anywhere online!" That's edging into Russell's Teapot territory, so I'd say the onus is on you to prove that these multitudes of longterm casual players who never interact with the rest of the community even exist. I'm willing to grant that a few do, but certainly not in the numbers imagined by the collective fantasists of this forum, or the imaginations of whatever hacks GW is employing to steer the ship of their intellectual property.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:18:45


The supply does not get to make the demands. 
   
Made in us
Battlefortress Driver with Krusha Wheel




Douglasville, GA

I'd say I'm a pretty casual gamer, but I'd still like to challenge my opponent and/or win sometimes. And that's hard to do when some units are MUCH worse at their primary task than others. For example, I could take a Stompa. Or I could take 3 Gorkanauts, for a cheaper pricetag, who will do everything it can only better in every way.
   
Made in us
Clousseau




I can only speak to what I see with my own eyes. With my own eyes in my city, the tournament players make up about 40% of the overall player population of 40k. The other 60% are pick up gamers down at the store that aren't interested in tournaments or events, they just want to show up a couple times a month to play and then go home.

However I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.

I know for a fact that there are about a dozen guys in my gaming circle that watch dakka and facebook groups who are not tournament players, but they never post anything (but they will talk about dakka discussions on saturday afternoons down at the store).

That cannot be used conclusively globally but in my city thats about how the numbers land.

Now as far as army lists go, even the casual players tend to mostly avoid non optimal builds, so you see I'd say 4 out of 5 games with optimal builds even though not everyone present is a tournament player, and those players will stick for on average 2.8 years (I'm an event organizer, I have 20 years of rosters to pull for my stats) before the churn and burn gets to them and they sell off and get out of the game solely because its very expensive and time consuming to have to buy and paint new armies every year to have good games.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:24:41


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 Agamemnon2 wrote:

I don't see how I'm supposed to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim as "Oh, there's tons of casual players out there, you just never see them anywhere online!" That's edging into Russell's Teapot territory, so I'd say the onus is on you to prove that these multitudes of longterm casual players who never interact with the rest of the community even exist. I'm willing to grant that a few do, but certainly not in the numbers imagined by the collective fantasists of this forum, or the imaginations of whatever hacks GW is employing to steer the ship of their intellectual property.


You mean like how anyone is supposed to be able to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim of "there's only competitive tournament players in 40k, and anybody who isn't one doesnt matter"?

 auticus wrote:
I can only speak to what I see with my own eyes. With my own eyes in my city, the tournament players make up about 40% of the overall player population of 40k. The other 60% are pick up gamers down at the store that aren't interested in tournaments or events, they just want to show up a couple times a month to play and then go home.

However I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.

I know for a fact that there are about a dozen guys in my gaming circle that watch dakka and facebook groups who are not tournament players, but they never post anything (but they will talk about dakka discussions on saturday afternoons down at the store).

That cannot be used conclusively globally but in my city thats about how the numbers land.


This strongly matches my experience. There's a core cadre of heavy duty tournament folks in my area, but they're vastly outnumbered by the number of folks who want to hang out, throw some dice, and have a good time, regardless of the high end viability (or lack thereof) of their armies.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:28:56


 
   
Made in fi
Calculating Commissar







 auticus wrote:
IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.


Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.

Sterling191 wrote:
You mean like how anyone is supposed to be able to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim of "there's only competitive tournament players in 40k, and anybody who isn't one doesn't matter"?


Touche. Although the burden of proof I placed on you was far lighter than that which you bestowed upon my humbled and crippled shoulders.

At any rate, if ninety-five games out of every hundred are being played using competitive tournament rules, even among these putative casual players, then the point still stands: Only the competitive tournament rules matter, because they are the de facto standard across the community, or at least all of the community who stand up to be counted. That there could exist cadres, cabals and sodalities of cloistered narrative players playing fast-and-loose, catch-as-catch-can 40k far away from the world's eyes is a hypothesis I am willing to entertain for the time being, but if said brethren are content in their obscurity, whether they're reckoned as a part of the whole somewhat becomes a matter of academic interest, nothing more.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:43:01


The supply does not get to make the demands. 
   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
 auticus wrote:
IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.


Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.
Or is it the other way, and their customers are missing the point of the game and trying to force it to be something it's not, and because it can sort of be molded into that fashion are keeping it in that realm when it wasn't intended to be?

I've recently started to look at getting into historical wargaming. For the most part (there are some exceptions with the 40k-esque games like Flames of War and Bolt Action) it's a completely different mindset. People get into those knowing that you really don't try to skew and min/max, because that's not the point of playing them. Other than the ones that push a competitive aspect (FoW is a big one here), you'll almost never see people waxing about if Unit X is better than Unit Y or how to build the "best" army. That idea exists in the games that are marketed as being for competitive, which is mainly Warhammer and games that were inspired by/designed to compete with Warhammer.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:37:18


- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 Agamemnon2 wrote:
 auticus wrote:
IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.


Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.


Matched play isnt remotely "competitive tournament rules".
   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

Sterling191 wrote:
 Agamemnon2 wrote:
 auticus wrote:
IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.


Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.


Matched play isnt remotely "competitive tournament rules".
But it is the set of rules designed for those sort of games, where you want "equal" forces rather than a social agreement. And the fact a lot of people use tournament rules in matched play regardless (see: Rule of Three), if not using ITC rules for regular games for "balance" (I've seen this. People will use ITC's rules and missions because they are the "most balanced", even if not in an ITC event or tournament), and I'd say that's a fair assessment. You find a lot of people who use rules that are used in a tournament for all matched play games because of the assumption that if it's good enough for tournaments it must be balanced, and if it must be balanced then it should be used in any sort of game where you want balance.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:41:38


- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in us
Clousseau




Matched play is not tournament rules, but typically i see tournament rules being what is being played at the store among the casuals and tournament players alike (ITC rules) and matched play is the foundation for either.

I do agree that even though the majority of players do not attend tournaments, that by and large the default setting is competitive play and not narrative or open play.

The only open play I have ever seen in five years since AOS came out are the events that I run, and those always have a lot of kick back from a couple people Every.Single.Time.

The store hosting our narrative campaign for AOS posted dates for our campaign meetups and there were players posting excitement saying "you guys are hosting AOS campaigns? I'm interested" - and then they find out its my campaign and that its open play and not following matched play standards, and the facebook sad/tears emoji is the response. (we have 12 players right now in the campaign who are open to open play / houseruling AOS because we don't like how AOS matched play RAW plays, so I'm not hurting for players, but if it were matched play-standard I could probably pull 25 - 30 players - however I have zero interest in that game)

AOS release in 2015 was the perfect litmus test for just how acceptable narrative games are to the community.

That being, hardly at all.

No points? No community. Release a bunch of campaign books loaded down with campaign rules and narrative scenarios? They sat on the shelf and had to be returned because only a very small handful of people bought any of them.

Release books with matched play rules? Grudgingly those books were bought by everyone, though the renewed cry of "please just release the points and profiles by themselves so I don't have to have books that I won't read" came back.

Even the narrative event organizer group that sprung from AOS that touts narrative events base almost entirely all of their activities on the back of matched play and tournament level lists, they just don't use standard ITC scenarios and include background stories.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:49:42


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Wayniac wrote:

But it is the set of rules designed for those sort of games, where you want "equal" forces rather than a social agreement.


"Equal" forces isnt a competitive tournament ruleset. Its a game with "equal" forces.


Wayniac wrote:

And the fact a lot of people use tournament rules in matched play regardless (see: Rule of Three), if not using ITC rules for regular games for "balance" (I've seen this. People will use ITC's rules and missions because they are the "most balanced", even if not in an ITC event or tournament), and I'd say that's a fair assessment. You find a lot of people who use rules that are used in a tournament for all matched play games because of the assumption that if it's good enough for tournaments it must be balanced, and if it must be balanced then it should be used in any sort of game where you want balance.


You're hilariously reaching here, first in the assumption that an ITC, ETC or whomever's homebrewed ruleset is balanced, or what the implications are of a non-tournament playerbase using said homebrew ruleset.
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka




That's not new. Neither is the fact it's total rubbish.

tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam  
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 Agamemnon2 wrote:


At any rate, if ninety-five games out of every hundred are being played using competitive tournament rules, even among these putative casual players, then the point still stands: Only the competitive tournament rules matter, because they are the de facto standard across the community, or at least all of the community who stand up to be counted. That there could exist cadres, cabals and sodalities of cloistered narrative players playing fast-and-loose, catch-as-catch-can 40k far away from the world's eyes is a hypothesis I am willing to entertain for the time being, but if said brethren are content in their obscurity, whether they're reckoned as a part of the whole somewhat becomes a matter of academic interest, nothing more.


Citation. Needed.

You keep warbling on about how "95 out of 100" players do XYZ without providing any kind of data to back it up, while simultaneously gaking on anyone who might dare to play the game a different way from you. Back it up, or accept the fact that there are multiple viable ways to play 40k, no matter how much you hate the players who do it differently.

Also I'd love to see the look on the faces of the 50-100 players who rotate through the local scene here when you show up and tell them they're a cloistered cabal of players who are doing it wrong and dont matter.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:52:43


 
   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

That's my point as well. "All" tournament games are matched play, but not all matched play are tournament games. However, most matched play games will adopt things that are used at tournaments because the perception is the tournament has to be balanced, therefore the rules they use have to be the most balanced, therefore it should be used for matched play.

Again I bring up things like the rule of three as the biggest offender which is explicitly a suggested rule for events and yet the vast majority of people have adopted it as a matched play rule where if you ask for list advice, even if you say it's not for an event, the expectation is that rule of three will be in effect. Whether or not the rule is good (and I think it is) the fact remains that it's a rule for tournaments which has "become" a rule for everyone. I've seen the same thing in regards to the ITC first floor LOS rule. This is often considered a baseline rule too, and again it might be a good rule (it is) but it's not a matched play rule and yet somehow finds its place in matched play all the time.

I also agree that launch AOS showed that the gamers of today, by and large, want codified balance and rules for building armies (specifically "balanced" armies) and don't want to have discussions or agreements over what they feel would be fun. The last bastion of that mindset is with a lot of the historical games where they still have very rudimentary points but the majority of games don't use points.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 12:56:49


- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in us
Ollanius Pius - Savior of the Emperor






Gathering the Informations.

I have to disagree that AoS showed that. The only issues I had with it in my gaming group were the people who went into the game determined to show that "you need balance".
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






I don’t understand why people continue to get bent out of shape about this. What you’d like 40k to be isn’t the same thing the designers intend it to be. The “then what am I paying for?” thing is bizarre. Just because it’s not what you’d ideally like it to be doesn’t mean there were no resources put into making it. If that renders it worthless to you, then just don’t buy it. It’s like buying a two-seater car because you think it looks cool and then complaining there’s nowhere for your kids to sit.
   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




Wayniac wrote:
That's my point as well. "All" tournament games are matched play, but not all matched play are tournament games. However, most matched play games will adopt things that are used at tournaments because the perception is the tournament has to be balanced, therefore the rules they use have to be the most balanced, therefore it should be used for matched play.

Again I bring up things like the rule of three as the biggest offender which is explicitly a suggested rule for events and yet the vast majority of people have adopted it as a matched play rule where if you ask for list advice, even if you say it's not for an event, the expectation is that rule of three will be in effect. Whether or not the rule is good (and I think it is) the fact remains that it's a rule for tournaments which has "become" a rule for everyone. I've seen the same thing in regards to the ITC first floor LOS rule. This is often considered a baseline rule too, and again it might be a good rule (it is) but it's not a matched play rule and yet somehow finds its place in matched play all the time.

I also agree that launch AOS showed that the gamers of today, by and large, want codified balance and rules for building armies (specifically "balanced" armies) and don't want to have discussions or agreements over what they feel would be fun. The last bastion of that mindset is with a lot of the historical games where they still have very rudimentary points but the majority of games don't use points.


I would even wonder if GW themselves as the big dog in the park, have pushed this culture. In a lot of cases units and models have been bad due to how the rules have turn out, fixes never really coming in a reasonable time.
In turn lead to players over the years finding a more competitive way of looking at the game, when some units and even some army can be so low on usability that turning up to play is more frustration than it is worth.

Even narrative play can be hard, if a unit does not even really function in the game due to rules as it probably should or no support to make it work.
   
Made in fi
Calculating Commissar







Sterling191 780073 10565134 wrote:
Citation. Needed.

You keep warbling on about how "95 out of 100" players do XYZ without providing any kind of data to back it up, while simultaneously gaking on anyone who might dare to play the game a different way from you.


Ask Auticus where he sourced his number, I simply used it in an attempt to find common ground with the enemy.

At any rate, you have utterly misunderstood my motivation. I would rather clamp my jaws shut with a nail gun than play competitive 40k, I find that entire practice pointless. After all, I haven't won a single game in the last three editions, because it turns out I'm dogshit at wargames, why the hell would I want to subject myself to that? But all anyone I ever played wanted to do was tournament this and ITC that. The last properly casual game I had predates the Tau as a faction.

I'd love it if the game was actually what GW claims it is, but I see precious little evidence of that fact. So frankly, I've given up trying to play it entirely.

The supply does not get to make the demands. 
   
Made in gb
Executing Exarch





 Agamemnon2 wrote:
"Decent people should not live here. They'd be happier somewhere else."


Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!

I blame Jervis...

"AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED." 
   
Made in us
Clousseau




 Kanluwen wrote:
I have to disagree that AoS showed that. The only issues I had with it in my gaming group were the people who went into the game determined to show that "you need balance".


The AOS community was mostly shriveled and dead until ghb came out with official points. By all accounts in most every nook out there that had whfb players, there was hardly any AOS scene until the ghb 2016.

From personal experience, all four GW shops in my city and the three closest had nearly no players and had virtually no sales of those first few realmgate war books. As my GW manager stated that I'll reshare, the GHB (2016) had more sales by itself than all of the AOS material combined up to that point.

Ask Auticus where he sourced his number, I simply used it in an attempt to find common ground with the enemy.


As I noted in my statement, that is my own personal observation of my own community. I can't state that that number applies to all communities globally. I can draw inferences from what I read online that my area is fairly common but you'll never be able to conclusively prove such a thing without a global study.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 13:12:55


 
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





 Agamemnon2 wrote:
Wayniac wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sterling191 wrote:
 Agamemnon2 wrote:


And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies.


Citation needed.
Yeah... that's obviously false. I'd wager MOST people in the 40k community are casual or laid back players. It's just that those people don't post in forums or ask for list advice; it's the competitive/tournament players who are the most vocal because they are the most visible online, partially in thanks to the major conventions and such which focus on their tournaments while they have a lot more. A casual player isn't going to care if X is so much better than Y if they like X. The competitive player is going to pretty much *only* care what is the most effective unit.

I don't see how I'm supposed to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim as "Oh, there's tons of casual players out there, you just never see them anywhere online!" That's edging into Russell's Teapot territory, so I'd say the onus is on you to prove that these multitudes of longterm casual players who never interact with the rest of the community even exist. I'm willing to grant that a few do, but certainly not in the numbers imagined by the collective fantasists of this forum, or the imaginations of whatever hacks GW is employing to steer the ship of their intellectual property.


I don’t know how you intend to proove it false, but it is quite easy to prove it right with just public revenue data and ITC data.

GW’s revenue for 2018 was £219mil and full ITC ranking is only about 8000 entries long. I get that not every competitive player is ITC ranked and there is also ETC, so lets generously multiply this figure by 10. For competitive focused crowd to fully fund GW you’ll need for every player to spend a whooping £27000 a year for churn and burn directly from GW. A 2000pts army purchased directly from GW is what, around £400? Ok, so 67 full armies a year is a bit of a stretch, so let’s see what we can do about it. IP license fees, no, only £11 mil... Ok, so we crank up those numbers and let’s assume that ITC rankings only list not a 1/10th but 1/100th of competitive players - it still leaves us with 6.7 full armies a year per every FLGS player... But realities of most FLGSs are that if there are 20 active players it is a popular FLGS and you rarely have shops with numbers of regulars reaching a 100... And no one churns and burns more than six full armies a year at official prices. It simply doesn’t add up that competitive crowd is a main bulk of GWs playerbase. Every poll, dakka, independent or GW’s leaks from interviews place competitive crowd at about 10% of total players, with major bulk of customers being mainly collectors playing single digit games a year if any at all.
   
Made in us
Wicked Warp Spider





Essentially, they realized that the rule bloat is again a thing, they have no time, skill or intent to tackle it, and therefore they go back to the same old excuse.
After all, the customer base bought a good chunk of models this year. So who cares, amrite?
Oh well.
 Vaktathi wrote:
Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever. Your typical player is likely only to really be into the game for a year or two, playing maybe once or twice a month or two, most will play a couple dozen games ever if not fewer, even many relatively active players may only get in ~50 or so games playing once a month over the course of an edition. The people that play hundreds of games over the course of an edition and stick through it for many years are relatively few by comparison. This does have an impact on how GW views and presents their product.

OTOH, I think that a decent ruleset would keep some of those people. Many, I personally think from my experience. In my former group in the old country people would look at a new model line, think to return to "our" 40k we all played together in high school and university, buy few models, realize the ruleset was frustrating garbage and would hamper their simple and fun list-making, and give up. I "lost" (only form the 40k standpoint obviously) most of my former group in this way. People just did not bother. Why should they?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 13:34:36


Generic characters disappearing? Elite units of your army losing options and customizations? No longer finding that motivation to convert?
Your army could suffer Post-Chapterhouse Stress Disorder (PCSD)! If you think that your army is suffering one or more of the aforementioned symptoms, call us at 789-666-1982 for a quick diagnosis! 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





One of the early D&D guys cut his teeth on Wargamming. To hear him tell it, D&D was kinda a progression of what they were doing with Wargamming. They'd have some games that even had, basically, a DM/GM.

Apparently, in one such game, he and his teammate just hated eachother. So they decided their characters should duel. There were no rules for it. But there was a guy "running" the game - basically a DM. He came up with the rolls off the top of his head. And it worked out.

My point is, tabletop wargamming has had more fluid/less clear rules than some find acceptable for *longer than D&D has existed*. And 40k is one of the least technical wargames out there - one of the most "It's about the experience".

Now, I don't want a DM for my 40k games. It's head to head, and I like that. But when rules aren't clear, having a non-player make a quick judgement lets you keep going and get back into it. For a casual game based on immersion, flipping through rulebooks really breaks you out of it.

At an FLGS, it's usually whoever's at the next table. We all kinda know who knows how much about the game, but even a green player's gut call is often better than spending 30 minutes digging through books.

At a tourny, there are TOs. And their role and scope is managed by the tourny itself. So, if there's an edge case, the resolution of that edge case is adjucated in a previously-agreed-upon manner. So that works well.

I'd love cleaner, more concise rules. But it's foolish to think they'll ever be perfect. And its' not that big a deal.
   
Made in us
Wicked Warp Spider





 Nazrak wrote:
I don’t understand why people continue to get bent out of shape about this. What you’d like 40k to be isn’t the same thing the designers intend it to be. The “then what am I paying for?” thing is bizarre. Just because it’s not what you’d ideally like it to be doesn’t mean there were no resources put into making it. If that renders it worthless to you, then just don’t buy it. It’s like buying a two-seater car because you think it looks cool and then complaining there’s nowhere for your kids to sit.

I am a pretty casual player myself and I only played tournaments for 5th-7th edition WHFB, never for 40k that I always considered inferior from that standpoint, but more interesting in certain aspect of the gameplay and in the lore and models concepts.
I think that a tight ruleset helps everyone. A tight ruleset is never going to repel people NOT interested in tight rules, only keeps in the group people that consider them a priority. And frankly, several iterations of the 40k ruleset were written in such a frustratingly bad manner that kept away even people that would happily play a game with their friends and weren't interested in tournaments. The impossibility to make some models and sometimes whole armies simply work, matches so uneven to make any game pointless because the outcome is known. And so on.
I almost fear a perfect balance because it can kill flavor, player creativity, character and so on. I myself preferred that marvelous mess of D&D 3.5 to 4th edition by far, or Vanilla wow to retail (that I did not play that much and I find repulsive for many reasons, story first). Not even Chess is perfectly balanced because white always begins the match.

Nonetheless, I am afraid that the usual GW justification is an excuse. Some intelligent Dakkanaut few days ago pointed out that GW has good designers (the rules are creative and interesting) but horrible developers. They just don't BELIEVE in developing. I think that is the crux of the issue. There must be a middle ground. There must be a way for the design team to think things in advance, to crunch numbers, and to do not add layers of rules over layers or rules in order to fix stuff that is non-functional, and then cry back to the old excuse in order to clean their conscience and reputation. And sorry, I do not accept any "it's just for narrative guys" excuse from the same people that sold the Skyhammer. They clearly planned formations to sell models in a bunch back them, and created rules to make them "interesting". This is hypocrisy.

I think that 8th edition had the heart in the right place for many reasons, I think is a system we should believe in at its core but it has glaring issues that are, luckily, fixable.
One is the same old escalation from 5th onward. More dakka, more saves/FnP, point reduction and rule layers in a negative feedback to keep units functional until the system collapses. All due to the scale of the game, from grot to titan. Then you have math failures like tank cannons and such that fire twice (it began with the Russes) because they did not think the math through. Flamer weapons. All these things CAN be fixed. 8th is not inherently flawed I think. Deepstrike and Infiltration CAN be differentiated again. And so on.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 13:56:33


Generic characters disappearing? Elite units of your army losing options and customizations? No longer finding that motivation to convert?
Your army could suffer Post-Chapterhouse Stress Disorder (PCSD)! If you think that your army is suffering one or more of the aforementioned symptoms, call us at 789-666-1982 for a quick diagnosis! 
   
Made in de
Contagious Dreadnought of Nurgle





 Agamemnon2 wrote:
Sterling191 780073 10565134 wrote:
Citation. Needed.

You keep warbling on about how "95 out of 100" players do XYZ without providing any kind of data to back it up, while simultaneously gaking on anyone who might dare to play the game a different way from you.


Ask Auticus where he sourced his number, I simply used it in an attempt to find common ground with the enemy.

At any rate, you have utterly misunderstood my motivation. I would rather clamp my jaws shut with a nail gun than play competitive 40k, I find that entire practice pointless. After all, I haven't won a single game in the last three editions, because it turns out I'm dogshit at wargames, why the hell would I want to subject myself to that? But all anyone I ever played wanted to do was tournament this and ITC that. The last properly casual game I had predates the Tau as a faction.

I'd love it if the game was actually what GW claims it is, but I see precious little evidence of that fact. So frankly, I've given up trying to play it entirely.


I see you stating that and can just say that for me it's the other way around. Tournament players/ competitive 40K for me is something mythical, something that is only existing on the internet and never visible in real life. In my group narrative play with points is the default, if we are short on time it's sometimes a simple maelstrom or eternal war, but even then we take our time and add some additional rules or use the open war cards or Cities of Death rules to spice it up. Claims of "unit x is unplayable" are usually discarded as "well, then you either don't use it in the right scenario or you need to play better". That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...

So in essence I'm probably exactly what GWs rules writers have in mind. And I can say 8th edition as a toolbox works perfectly for me, it's just that rules are usually too expensive (Vigilus, Urban warfare) and/or are too far spread out. I'd prefer a pdf that puts all (narrative) missions together. And then one with all the warzones or battlezones. Then one with campaign trees. Would be cool if CA did that.
   
Made in pl
Wicked Warp Spider





Another take on this whole „nearly all players are competitive”, Facebook pages/groups member count:

Warhammer 40k official - 150k
Spikey Bits - 177k
Competitive 40k - 10k
Competitive 40k/ITC discussion - 1.9k
...
And some „oddities” to compare:
Warhammer 40k Terrain and more - 5.9k
Necromunda official - 18k
The Ash Wastes - 1.5k
Necromunda Terrain Makers - 7.7k
Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress - 3.5k

And according to some dakka members no one plays those crap boxed/specialist games and GW should focus solely on refining balance as measured by ITC statistics...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 14:19:58


 
   
 
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